Museum review: Canadian Human Rights Museum / Musée pour les droits de la personne, Winnipeg

November 3, 2023

I found myself in Winnipeg for 3 days in 2023 (to referee at the Manitoba Open, which was great) and the museum is now open, so I went for a visit after lunch at the Forks. Human rights is an abstract concept, so I was interested to see how the museum would represent that in the form of exhibits.

Mount Hopeless attempt, August 25-27, 2023

October 12, 2023

We carried mountaineering gear 50km on a long weekend and had a nice walk in the fluffy snow, but no summit.

Book review: Wellington's Railways: Colonial Steam to Matangi, by David Parsons

October 8, 2023

David Parsons. Wellington’s Railways: Colonial Steam to Matangi. 2010. This book is certainly not lacking in detail. It covers the early development of Wellington region rail (different parts of New Zealand, and I guess many other countries, were quite isolated 150 years ago) until 1920; refinements from 1920 to 1970; and the changes from 1970 to 2010. Wellington rail did manage to mostly hang on through the global Reagan-Thatcher neoliberal era.

September: 'back to school' and yet more trips

October 1, 2023

I’m starting to write this with 4 days of September left. This month has also flown by. Well, I did fly to Canada, which took a bunch of days. Have been back in Wellington for a week and a bit. Also two weekend trips in September: camping on Matiu/Somes Island and a trip that was meant to be mountaineering but diverted to Taupō due to the weather. I just updated my Common CV (boo!

August: more trips

September 16, 2023

Lots of trips, not much work. August is OK to be a quiet month. August outdoors activities in NZ need to be winter-ish, i.e. you have to be aware of avalanches (or someone does; we went to ski resorts).